Story Four - Burying my memories

1949

Burying my memories

Granddad Wilkes, Mum’s dad, was a gambler. He loved to bet on the horses. When Pearl Diver won the Epsom Derby in 1947, ridden by Grandad’s favorite jockey, George Bridgland, he made a bundle of money. With his winnings, he bought the Globe Inn at the top of Queen Street. Then, following another big win on the horses a couple of years later, he bought adjoining houses in Gwavas Street, Penzance, for his two daughters, Aunty Joan and Hazel, my mum.

I was seven, Jimmie twelve, and baby Charles now just two. I didn’t want to leave our Trevarveneth Street home in Newlyn. Neither did Jimmie. Like me, we were I happy and comfortable at school – even when my teacher Miss Harvey was grumpy - happy at home, and even happier when I was scouring the pebbles on Lariggan Beach with my friends, Roger Simons, Johnny Hoskins and Dick Jenkins, searching for another piece of amber.

I became very upset the day before we were due to leave our home In Gwavas Estate, now half emptied of its furniture. To stop me crying, Mum took my hand to reassure me, and said it would be a really good idea if the three of us buried a Newlyn memory in the garden. Although it sounded as if that was something special, I wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

How do you bury a memory?

Mum said if we each put some things in an Oxo treasure tin and bury them the garden, we would never completely leave the house. –Oh, I thought, got it. Now I understand. What a great idea! That’s just what pirates do with their treasure chests.

That evening, after teatime of sliced white Wonderloaf bread, margarine, treacle, and a cup of tea, we went upstairs to fill our treasure oxo tins.

As I went through my collections, it took me a while to decide what to put in mine.  Should I, I wondered, put my Lariggan amber in the Oxo tin

and bury it in the back garden in Newlyn, forever?

No. I couldn’t part with my yellow amber. If I buried it, how would I ever see and touch it again?

I decided that I would miss it too much, and, looking inside my old cardboard box, chose instead one of my favorite wishing rocks, a limpet with a hole in its shell, a small smooth white pebble, part of one of my grandfather’s greyish white clay pipes, and one of his small clay marbles he’d had as a child.

When we’d filled our treasure tins, Jimmie and I went downstairs, jumping two steps at a time. “OK. Ready? Let’s go and bury our special memory tins. Oh, here, put these in your tin,” Mum said, giving us each a special coin. Each coin was minted the year we were born.

She handed me a farthing, dated 1942, with a picture of a robin on one side. It was my favorite coin, as she well knew. Jimmie’s was a 1938 halfpenny. Baby brother Charles had a 1947 penny. We wrapped our little but very sentimental treasures in a small piece of yellow silk, cut from Uncle Donald’s torn parachutes that he brought back from his time as paratrooper in the war. Then we shut and taped our tins so that nothing could get inside.

We went through the kitchen door to the back garden. No one spoke. Even baby Charles, cradled in Mum’s arms, was quiet. The atmosphere was emotionally charged. Jimmie fetched his small garden spade and, staring at the earth, dug a really deep hole near the gooseberry bushes in the back of the garden. It was just the right place as Mum always said that’s where she found us. Without a word, Mum put Charles down on the grass and held our hands tightly as the tears ran down our faces. We buried the oxo memory treasure tins deep in the garden, and then covered them over with earth, beach pebbles, and dead leaves.

We went quietly inside our home to gather all our belongings. Mum gave me a big empty cardboard box, just big enough for my growing collection of OXO tins, Woodbine cigarette cards, my Beano and Dandy comics, three birds’ nests, blown seagull eggs, seashells, a box full of conkers, and some oak apples I found in Penlee Park.

The next morning, Dick and Bill Simons helped Dad and Mum load our furniture and cardboard boxes filled with clothes and our treasures– and the big glass jar filled with wishing rocks - on the back of Dick Jenkins’ lorry.

Waving goodbye to the neighbors in Gwavas Estate, Dad began to drive slowly down Paul Hill, across Penzance Promenade, and up Adelaide Street, to begin a new life in 23, Gwavas Street, in Penzance, a few days before the start of the new school year.

And so it was that Jimmie, Charles and I left our treasure tins filled with our memories of walks down country lanes and across Lariggan Beach deep down in the soft earth of the back garden at 17, Trevarveneth Street, Gwavas Estate, Newlyn.

I didn’t like our new house in Gwavas Street, Penzance. It looked very small. “Where’s the garden, Mum?” I asked.

“Johnny, there isn’t a garden at the front, or at the back. Just a back lane.”

Jimmie grimaced. “No inside lav, either, I bet.

’Ow do we go lav at night? ‘Ave to use pots?

Do we, Mum? Scabby!”